


on a quiet hill

by jonphaedrus



Category: Tales of Hearts
Genre: F/M, Massive Headcanon, Talesmas 2014, biases showing - Freeform, post-game fic, technically a happy ending but not the kind you wanted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 11:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4017808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That night, as he helped her build a shelter in one of the now once-again colourful houses in the residential district of Cinderella, Hisui looked at the still-frozen statues of people in the city, and knew it wouldn’t be long now for some of them. The first girl had woken up, the first person to come back to life, and now one by one they could return the heartbeat of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on a quiet hill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kriseli](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=kriseli).



> an EXTREMELY BELATED talesmas 2k14 pinch hit for kriseli on tumblr. also GRATUITOUS HEADCANON, IM SO SORRY.

He stayed to watch Kohaku and Shing’s wedding, he stayed to see the Empress and her Captain tie the knot. He watched Beryl become a court painter, and wondered, sometimes, where Gall had gone. 

And then, because he didn’t have much else to stay for, Hisui went to Minera.

 

 

He felt like it was his responsibility. Sort of. Nobody had ever said “Hey Hisui, one of us should stay on Minera to heal the planet!” but he had decided for himself that he had a responsibility to Minera that none of the others quite had. He had a responsibility to Lithia. So, with Chalcedony’s help, they carted dirt and plants and food and all kinds of things from Organica over, until finally Hisui stood there in Cinderella with his arms crossed, scratching his chin, and nodded to himself.

They had a lot of work to do.

 

 

The first few years were lonely. It was just him, living there on that dead-silent world, trying to bring it back to life. And it came, slowly. The colour and pulse came from the Beanstalk Tower, they came from where he slept in Lithia and Fluora’s old house, they came from the beds of Organican soil and Organican flowers that he had planted next to the old Mineran planters.

But at first, it was just colour. Just Hisui, living alone for five years on a dead-silent world with only the slowly seeping colour for company and the occasional visit from his sister with her toddler.

Until, after six years—a Mineran flower bloomed.

 

 

It was ten years before the first animal woke up. For five years, Hisui had desperately tended plants, convincing them to grow and blossom, crossing them with the hardier Organican breeds and discovering a green thumb not of natural talent but of hard work. He watched grass not just be green but truly be _alive,_ watched trees finally wake up, and the water in Cinderella start to ebb and flow again. 

It seemed like such a small victory, but it wasn’t until he woke up one morning to find himself staring at a mouse on his chest (and was so surprised that he didn’t react past staring at the rodent) that the realisation of life, of a future, for this planet truly began to sink in.

Oh, he would not have children, or lead countries, or be remembered by history the same way his friends and companions were. He would not be spoken of in whispers or written of in song. But he would wake up the next morning to hear Fluora’s bird singing for the first time in more than a thousand years, and smile not so much in triumph but in realisation.

 

 

After twenty years on the silence of Minera, it was not so silent any more. The aching emptiness that had greeted Hisui the first time he had come there was gone, replaced by verdant overflowing plantlife and animals, multiplying all the time. There were larger carnivores now—varieties of cats and dogs about whom Hisui knew nothing, so he just guessed. He’d even met one sort-of horse thing.

But the day that a young woman, probably not much older than Kohaku had been when they had gone on their journey, stumbled into Cinderella, holding her head and crying helplessly, Hisui found himself practically glowing.

That night, as he helped her build a shelter in one of the now once-again colourful houses in the residential district of Cinderella, Hisui looked at the still-frozen statues of people in the city, and knew it wouldn’t be long now for some of them. The first girl had woken up, the first person to come back to life, and now one by one they could return the heartbeat of the world.

 

 

After thirty years, there was now a small, thriving community in Cinderella. Hisui had somehow become a leader, the man who had stayed to wake them up, to heal their planet, and now they had several small children running around (he wondered if it wasn’t because the younger you were, the easier it was to bounce back) and a few teenagers. There were the men and women a handful of years younger than him, and one woman who had to be in something like her late eighties, and all together, they made a community of almost thirty people.

Thirty people of a population of millions, but thirty people more than there had been thirty years before. One by one, they were all waking up, and one by one, as people returned from calcification, more people came along with them. Cinderella glowed now, with life and light, and Hisui looked up into the night sky sometimes and watched Organica rotating far, far above his head, and wondered what it would have been like if he had never left.

 

 

After fifty years, the first of the Minerans died. In her sleep, gentle, at a wizened age that Hisui was starting to feel in his bones. They buried her beneath Fluora’s tree, what he was sure would be the first of many such burials to grace some of the finest ground in Cinderella. She had been so old when she had woken up, and it reminded Hisui more and more as he helped dig the pit that he was not getting any younger. 

He had been on Minera longer than he had ever been on Organica, and sometimes, he even forgot what it smelled like, or looked like, there. He barely remembered. It seemed like another life before he had come to Minera, and in some ways, he didn’t really regret leaving. He missed his sister, he missed his friends, but there was so much here as well. People who needed him and looked to him, a relic now even to their own reliclike lives. He gave them another perspective, another idea of life.

And he held them together, with the hope and dream that someday maybe the rest of Minera would wake up.

 

 

Seventy years passed from the moment that Minera had been released from Gardenia. Seventy years brought beautiful, sprawling plantlife. Hybrids of two planets worth of plants. Dozens of different animal species that were mysterious to Hisui. Colours, and moving, living machinery. The laughter and voices of over two hundred people living in and around the city of Cinderella, and more waking up every day. 

The world was healing. It was nowhere near healed, but it was slowly, slowly coming back to life. Many of the statues in Cinderella were gone, now replaced with their living, breathing counterparts. Stigma was vanishing. Trade and relationships were opening between the white moon (no longer so white) and the green moon, vibrant and beautiful with life.

And, one morning, Hisui lay alone in the room that had once belonged to Fluora and Lithia, so many years before, breathing pained, slow breaths, and knew it was the end of his time. Oh, he had had a good life. He had helped heal a planet devoid of life. He had seen his sister grown and aged and happy. He had lived, and loved, and grown, and failed, and regretted very little. It was the kind of death that he did not regret, he did not feel bad.

There was the quiet creak of the door, and footsteps. Heavy footsteps. “Moonstone,” Hisui said quietly, his voice hoarse and cracked, withered with age, “You are free to go. Please, just let me rest.”

“I assume that Moonstone is another Mechanoid,” a quiet voice replied, a voice that like a punch to the gut took Hisui back, back, so many years, an entire lifetime. “But I cannot leave. I am obeying an order.”

Hisui looked up and up and up, and there above him was Kunzite. The same as he had been seventy years before, the same as he had been his whole life. He smiled. It was an odd expression on his face.

“You’re…awake.” He could barely believe it, and Kunzite nodded.

“I have been given an order.” And Hisui was about to protest, to deny, to say _no, please, not that_ and then there was a vibrating, glowing ball of white light over Kunzite’s chest and there, there:

Lithia.

She was beautiful. She hadn’t aged a day. Her long green hair glistened in the light, and her rosy cheeks hid a smile. 

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she whispered, sitting down on the bed next to him. Hisui hadn’t forgotten how heavy she was, not with all the other Minerans around, and expected the sudden wild dip in the bed, but was too tired, too worn-out, to do anything but slid down to bump against her.

She leaned forward, and brushed the hair from his face. It had thinned so much over the years, down to just sparse silver and white, but she still ran her fingers through it like it was thick and dark as it had been when he was young.

“Lithia,” her name was heavy on his tongue, and she kept smiling as she leaned over and kissed him gently between the eyes, smoothed the heavy wrinkles on his skin. “You can’t.” He lifted one gnarled, shaking hand to wrap gently around her wrist, and she just smiled more, her eyes sparkling with good humour.

“I want to. You looked after them for me. Now I’ll look after you, and then I think everyone can take care of themselves.” He took a shaking breath, watching her, and realised he was crying as she shifted more over him, slid one arm under his waist and cupped his cheek with her other.

She was crying too.

“I love you,” Hisui whispered, and the last thing he saw was the creeping grey touching Lithia’s hair, into her face, and her bright eyes as she cried in return, joy written on both their faces for that one last moment before it was utterly quiet in that tiny bedroom.

 

 

Left alone, Kunzite slowly reached over and closed Hisui’s eyes. He felt…lonely, suddenly. While he had been asleep Lithia had been there with him, and now he was simply alone. Eventually, he bent over and lifted Lithia up. She was heavy, but in his arms, was as light as a feather. Even calcified. She was frozen, smiling, eyes open, staring down at the man she had loved.

Hisui was old, and small, and looked very tired. He weighed even less than a feather in Kunzite’s arms, even less than Lithia, and he picked the man up and held him gently as he went out the back door of the small house that he had spent his young life in to the garden, ranging out over a hill.

It had been grey and frozen, once, and now it ran with bubbling water and was covered in beautiful, and Kunzite set both his mistress and her love down on the grass, still curled together, before he activated his Soma and very slowly dug a trench. His chest felt tight, and it was only times like this that he questioned whether or not he truly wanted a Soma that was real, that was human, that ached as much as it did.

He had no choice.

This was the life he had found for himself, the family he had chosen.

At last, when he was done, Kunzite returned to Hisui’s body and gently approached the grave and set him into it. His body was growing stiff, but the peaceful expression of a man who has found happiness was still on his old, still features.

Kunzite, very gently, buried him back up, and knew that if his body had been designed with the capability to release tears, he would have been crying at that moment. Instead, he simply finished the job, smoothed the soil over Hisui’s body, and brought over his mistress.

He set Lithia in the place where she had died, poised over Hisui’s body, her calcified fingers pressed into the dirt, her face alight with life and vitality even as her body froze.

He stopped, at the head of the grave. He was not gifted with eloquence, and moreover, there was nothing to say. No stone needed to mark Hisui’s grave: they would know.

Kunzite closed his eyes. Crossed his arms in front of him, comfortably. Settled his heels into the soft grass.

He breathed, once.

_Unit [KUNZITE|JACK] powering off._

_Unit [KUNZITE|JACK] has powered off._

 

 

 

 

 

Five hundred years later, they still set flowers at the grave with the moss-covered stone and the knight.

Nobody remembered who had once been buried there.

It did not matter. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr @Professorjonathanphaedrus


End file.
